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Space for the Departed: Bone Ash Apartments as an Alternative to Cemeteries in Urban China
Many people in China have started buying residential apartments, not to live in, but to store the ashes of deceased family members. These are called bone ash apartments. Some people think it’s creepy and unlucky to be neighbors with them. Others say, “Honestly, I’d rather have dead neighbors than noisy ones.” So, I started asking, how did bone ash apartments become a real alternative to cemeteries in China? This isn’t just about space—it’s about how land, death, tradition, economy, and policy collide in today’s urban China (UN-Habitat 2020). (more…) (read more...)
Space Selfie: Rethinking Scalarity Between Orbit and Home
We are in Ruzaevka, a small town near Saransk, the regional capital of Mordovia, Russia. Ham radio operator Dmitry Pashkov, photographer Sergei Karpov, and I climb the roof of the local technical college. Sergei and I are on the roof because we are interested in so-called bottom-up space exploration. Dmitry works at this college as an IT specialist. It is a cloudy day in March, and there is a cold wind on the roof, still icy from the winter. Dmitry promises to show us how to get an image of the European part of Russia using an American weather satellite. (more…) (read more...)
Series Introduction: The Politics of Writing About Platform Workers’ Organizing
We are a group of scholars and researchers who work with gig and platform worker unions in India in various capacities. We form the India chapter of the Labor Tech Research Network collective, and have been meeting regularly from across the globe to share cross-sectoral organizing strategies, track the political landscape around gig & platform unions, and discuss research and reflections from our place-based engagements. Our work sits at the critical intersection of scholarship and activism. It involves amplifying workers’ voices, supporting unionisation efforts, and supporting workers in their struggles to lead more dignified and just working lives. Our discussions have inspired us to put together this blog series on the politics of writing about platform workers’ organizing. (more…) (read more...)